On This President, His Political Party and Voting

From the interwebs today.

And if this is your political party's positions, you basically don't want fellow Americans, fellow countrymen, fellow taxpayers, to vote and again, your political party is atrocious. The party is for themselves and their donors, the already-wealthy and corporations, not the people.

Thanks, Republicans.

First They Gerrymandered, Then Voter ID Laws and Now This

First, there was gerrymandering--sculpting out voting districts from your state that benefits your own political party.

Both parties did it, sure, but then the Republicans decided it was one helluva great idea so they REALLY went with it. They carved up their constituents voting districts so it put the 8 ball in their corner pocket, time and again, getting them elected.

This is how gerrymandering works.

And here's an example:

Then? Next?

They decided that wasn't enough, they scare the people and tell them there were people out there--"fereners", illegals, illegal immigrants and others who were trying and lying to vote, left and right.

And the best way to stop it? The best way to stop these people from voting illegally?

Why, we got yer voter ID laws right here, folks, right here in River City.

Forget that all hard data on it, time and again, state to state, across the nation, down through time shows there is extremely little to no vote fraud going on. Forget that, ignore that. It's surely "out there." They're out there, just waiting to vote illegally. Sure they are.

Myth of Voter Fraud 

 Brennan Center for Justice

The Success of the Voter Fraud Myth

The Myth of Voter Fraud - 

Cornell University Press

So enact voter ID laws they did and they have and they still are. Everything they can do to disenfranchise people who aren't likely to vote for Republican.

And who are those people?  Glad you asked. They are

• the elderly (unless they're already-wealthy)
• the poor
• minorities
• the physically-challenged

At minimum.

And when you add those four groups together, that can be a great deal of people, a great deal of fellow Americans, denied the right to vote.

But again, they've done it and they're doing it, and all across states and the nation.

Now? Next? That's not enough so now what are they doing?

Outrageous GOP Lame Duck Power Grabs in NC, MI and Especially WI: 'BradCast' 12/4/2018

Wisconsin Republicans approve bill to weaken Democrats' power 

So get this.

They lost. In at least 3 states, North Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin Republicans lost.

They had all that gerrymandering and voter ID laws going for them, taking away votes from fellow Americans, tax-paying citizens but they still lost.

So what do they do?

At the last minute, before they're summarily thrown out of office---by the electorate, by the voters--they rush to put in place new laws that strip power from the incoming--Democratic--office holders.

Understand, folks. These people who do this--and yes, they're all in the Republican Party, factually--are not out there for the people first. They're not out there for their constituents first. They're not out there for their District or state or the nation first. No, sir and ma'am, they absolutely are not.

They are out there for themselves and for their political party, above all. They are "party firsters", for sure.

Worse than that, far worse, they are out there for the political party first AND last.

Vote wisely, folks.

Vote carefully.

On This Republican Congress--And This Coming Election

Great and Fair Question for the Republicans and Right Wing

Could they be more hypocritical?

Missouri Republicans' Successful Gerrymandering

First, because I don't think enough people know what gerrymandering is, I put up a definition. Gerrymandering is to manipulate the boundaries of (an electoral constituency) so as to favor one party or class.

Political parties gerrymander districts so that their candidate(s) gets elected or re-elected to government office.

And it's wrong.

It skews voting away from the will of the people in the area, in the district, and puts more in the favor of the political party instead of the constituents.

And news out this week shows, further, that the Republicans in the Missouri statehouse in Jefferson City keep doing precisely this and it's a beauty. This from Addicting Info:

Huge Gerrymandering Fail Leaves College Student As Sole Voter In Missouri District

Businesses in Columbia, Missouri attempted to use their political pull to throw taxes at consumers instead of themselves, but a massive failure in their gerrymandering effort left them with one major roadblock: a 23-year-old college student who, on February 28, became the only registered voter in the district.

Representatives of the Business Loop 70 Community Improvement District attempted to remove every single eligible voter as part of an effort to ensure that local businesses had complete control over legislation — including a sales tax increase that would enable them to effectively force citizens to pay the businesses’ bills. The Columbia City Council voted in 5-2 in April to establish the district, which resembles a dinosaur drawn by a kindergartener (pictured below).

With this, their handiwork was done:

The Columbia Daily Tribune notes that, with pesky voters out of the way, the local businesses could effectively set their own laws:

“The Columbia City Council established the district on a 5-2 vote in April in response to a petition from a group of property owners in the CID boundaries. The “qualified voters” in a CID are capable of levying various taxes or assessments within the boundaries of the district to fund improvement projects. Under state law, decisions to impose sales taxes in a CID are to be made by registered voters living in the district boundaries. If no such registered voters are present, property owners vote.”

This is bad enough, certainly, but I think it's been shown, time and again, across cities, states and the nation, that the worst outcomes of all this gerrymandering is when they weaken votes of Americans due to their skin color.

We need to overcome this gerrymandering, certainly, and it can be done. We need to outlaw it so we can take our state and Federal governments back, for the people.

That and overturning the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling and ending campaign contributions so we get the big money out of our election system and government.

No small tasks, to be sure but these can be done. We have to stand up.

A Senate Republican Speaks Truth to Their Power

At last, long overdue, but we get some truth and honesty from someone inside this political party, calling their "Voter ID laws" what they really are and that is voter suppression.

Most assuredly un-American.  It's shameful. We need to rise up, speak out against this and overturn these efforts and soon as possible.

First Texas---next, Kansas and Missouri?

Let's hope so. It seems the US Department of Justice ruled Texas' Voter ID laws discriminatory and so, has thrown them out. Good for them. That's a good start. Now, hopefully, as said above, maybe it can come this way and disavow Kansas' and Missouri's useless, discriminatory, un-American voter ID laws since they're only really created to get fewer Americans voting. Link: http://www.workingamerica.org/blog/2012/03/13/texas-voter-id-law-deemed-discriminatory/

Republicans also now disenfranchising Military Veterans

More shamelessness from the Right Wing and Republicans. Not only are they disenfranchising the elderly of the country and Hispanics and poor and possibly Black Americans and other minorities but now, what with their limiting the voters with various voter ID requirements, it's gotten worse and its come down on our military veterans. Veterans want to know why a military service ID card is good under the new Wisconsin voter ID law, but a photo ID card issued by the VA isn't. Crazy, right? But that's your Republican Party for you. They don't want us voting. Link: http://www.aclu.org/blog/voting-rights/willing-die-their-country-unable-vote-it

The stupid coming out of Jeff City, part I

Every time some Republican office holder proposes making voting more difficult in Missouri, like they're doing right now, I just want to explode.  Here we go again:

Missouri lawmakers back photo ID requirement for voting

by David A. Lieb

The Associated Press

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Missouri lawmakers endorsed measures Tuesday that could resurrect a requirement for voters to show government-issued photo identification in order to cast ballots. 


The photo identification requirement has been pushed by Republicans -- who now have even larger legislative majorities than they did five years ago -- as a means of guarding against voter fraud. 


I swear, if these people--Republicans and the Republican Party--had their way, we would vote on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday nights (only one), at 3 am so as few could show for the polls as possible.  


Think about it, since more than 90 percent of us work, why don't we vote on Saturdays?  It would even be easier to get volunteers to run the polls, let alone voters.  It makes no sense--unless you don't want large quantities of the population voting, that is.


The fact is, this will make it more difficult for Senior citizens, minorities, people with physical handicaps and the poor to vote and that is decidedly, absolutely not their voting demographic.  This is just more of the same, where people with money and education are trying to keep the voting to and for themselves but keep out people who don't think or vote the way we do, so by gosh let's keep them from easily being able to get to the polls and vote.  This is disgusting.


Not only is this ignorant and obnoxious, but for anyone who has followed voting laws out of the capital, it's part of a long line of such attempts at laws.   Check it out, from The New York Times five years ago:


EDITORIAL

Voter Suppression in Missouri

Published: August 10, 2006

Missouri is the latest front in the Republican Party’s campaign to use photo ID requirements to suppress voting. The Republican legislators who pushed through Missouri’s ID law earlier this year said they wanted to deter fraud, but that claim falls apart on close inspection. Missouri’s new ID rules — and similar ones adopted last year in Indiana and Georgia — are intended to deter voting by blacks, poor people and other groups that are less likely to have driver’s licenses. Georgia’s law has been blocked by the courts, and the others should be too.

Even before Missouri passed its new law, it had tougher ID requirements than many states. Voters were required, with limited exceptions, to bring ID with them to the polls, but university ID cards, bank statements mailed to a voter’s address, and similar documents were acceptable. The new law requires a government-issued photo ID, which as many as 200,000 Missourians do not have.


As if that weren't enough, back in 2008, we Missourians were already given the notoriety for having "The Worst Voting Law in the Country":  http://www.alternet.org/news/85198/


So let's see this for what it is.  This is another of many attempts, down through the history of our country by various groups, to keep people from voting.  They wanted to keep women from voting.  They wanted to keep African-Americans from voting and now, with this, they can try to keep at least four portions of the electorate--again, Seniors, minorities, people with physical handicaps and the poor--from voting.

That they would do this to claim to keep the ballot box safer is only more galling.


Next up for stupid out of Jeff City:  government money going to private, religion-based schools.


Links:  http://www.kmov.com/news/local/Missouri-lawmakers-back-photo-ID-requirement-for-voting-116277449.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/opinion/10thu1.html?_r=1

The very racist United States of America

Let there be no mistake.

We can't pat ourselves on our collective backs any longer.

First, there was Douglas Blackmon's book, "Slavery by Another Name," out last year, that received a Pulitzer Prize last week, about the United States true and until now, ignored and really, unknown history of a second kind of slavery for African-Americans after the Civil War.

There was untold cruelty, punishment, unfounded incarceration, what could easily be described as torture, rampant, sanctioned discrimination and even murders, all passing under the eye of local and Federal government. And it lasted from after the Civil War until deep into the middle of the 1900s.

Now, the country's Supreme Court is considering throwing out the Voting Rights Act of 1964 because parts of it only apply to what we understood was always known as the more racist "Deep South."

What a travesty.

And in Missouri?

Our Republican representatives are trying to push through a constitutional amendment that would require a government-supplied photo identification in order to vote.

Gee whiz, to use a phrase.

Could we get more "Jim Crow" about voting and disenfranchisement?

Clearly, this is an attempt to make it more difficult for the poor, minorities and the elderly (read: Democrats) to vote, let there be no doubt.

So on both the national and local/regional level, the conservative, clearly Republican groups are trying there hardest to make discrimination and disenfranchisement the law of the land.

It's pitiful.

It's pathetic.

It's sad.

It's tragic.

It's brutally unfair and should be made clear this is what's going on.

Ask yourself--why don't we vote on Saturdays?

Wouldn't that make sense? Wouldn't it be a great deal easier to get large groups of people in polling booths than how we do it now?

And the answer is, unequivocally, resoundingly, yes.

We don't vote on Saturday because the powers that be don't want us all voting.

These national and state attempts to change these laws are at least partially, if not completely, for one of them, racist in their attempt, let there be no doubt.

We are the racist United States of America and we should be far better than this.

Links to stories:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103610184
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kbia/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1499514§ionID=1
http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/